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Emeralds.

Celts[1] (pr. Kelts, not Selts) often have red hair and green eyes. If a man is involved with a woman of Celtic descent, then he starts thinking about buying her stuff that is red or green. A dark green dress, for example, or a Mandarin red silk wrap with gold and black dragons embroidered on it. Or jewelry, if you’re at that stage of life (i.e. career, i.e. income) that allows you to go beyond the basic clear white diamond engagement ring. Rings, ear-rings (clip or post depending on whether you’ve been smart enough to notice if she’s had her ears pierced), and necklaces. Green or red jewelry means emeralds or rubies.

Here’s where things get complicated. The best rubies come from Myanmar (Burma). Mostly the mines are in central and northern Burma. These regions fell under British control after the Third Anglo-Burmese War (1885). In 1948, Burma became independent of Britain as a republic. Subsequently it took the name of Myanmar. It has had a military dictatorship for decades and, more recently, there has occurred the whole unfortunate genocide of the Rohingyas thing. But that’s another story for another time.

The best emeralds come from Columbia. The tectonic plate movement (up-thrust and subduction) along the western edge of South America pushes hot rock and gases up through yielding sedimentary rocks. Those gases include beryllium, chromium, and vanadium. They flow into gaps in the sedimentary rocks, cool, and harden into emeralds. As it happens, most of these deposits are found in the Boyaca (pr. Boy-yaka) and Cundinamarca districts, which lie on the eastern slopes of the Andes. Much of this territory was first explored by Spaniards under the command of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada (1496-1579). (Jimenez led several disastrous-to-catastrophic expeditions into the interior, then died of leprosy.[2]) Much later in the bloody history of Columbia, a conventional civil war between left and right[3] molted into a decades-long struggle between the government, leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitary groups, and drug cartels. Tens of thousands of people have died. The leader among the left-wing rebels is the “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia” (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia or FARC). They started off as peasant Communists sponsored by Fidel Castro’s Cuba back when it was trying to export its own revolution. Communism didn’t work out, so they turned to Capitalism[4]: dealing drugs and kidnapping people for ransom. Not that FARC was alone in the resort to drug dealing. Columbia soon became the major source of cocaine imported into the United States.[5]

Nor was FARC alone in the kidnap and ransom trade.[6] They were just very good at it. The movie “Proof of Life” (dir. Taylor Hackford, 2000) examines the business. The movie is about Columbia, thinly disguised at the fictional country of “Tecala.” During the filming, Meg Ryan had a steamy interlude with Russell Crowe. Her eyes are blue, not green. He would have given her sapphires. So much for the hoped-for symmetry in my little essay.

Control over the emerald mines has become a key source of wealth for all the combatants. A black market has developed. Hence, Columbian emeralds are considered “conflict gems.” Tiffany’s and Cartier don’t sell emeralds. Hard thing to learn at Christmas.

[1] People who trace their distant ancestry to Ireland, Scotland, Wales.